


Hidden Things

by abelinabeaumont (abbily1428)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 08:24:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19422184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbily1428/pseuds/abelinabeaumont
Summary: "What are you doing here?" Hermione Granger spun around, wand drawn, not expecting company for several more minutes. "I suspect the same as you, Malfoy. Trying to figure out what a Death Eater wants with a Vanishing Cabinet. Although, I'm guessing you already know." / Book compliant for the most part. Eventual Dramione. Rated M for violence and eventual sexual content.





	Hidden Things

The Room of Hidden Things gave her anxiety, it always had. She had first found the iteration of the Room of Requirement after reading a journal of one of the former Head Girls, who had left an ancient text on house elf bonding rituals on one of the many bookshelves. It took her three hours of digging to find the book, along with multiple cuts on her hands and several crashes. It only took her seconds to find what she was looking for now.

The cabinet was beautiful, really. It looked like an antique wardrobe that her grandmother had when she was young, with beautiful carvings of various flora and fauna on the drawers, and a large mirror on the front. Hermione would climb into it when she was younger and pretend she was in the world of Narnia, where magic existed and animals could speak and the great lion fought all that was evil for his people. She smiled and ran her hand along the edge. Someone would have to be an idiot to believe that this was just an ordinary wardrobe. The magic of it tingled in her fingers as they moved across the dusty mahogany.

“What are you doing here?”

Hermione Granger spun around, wand drawn, not expecting company for several more minutes. “I suspect the same as you, Malfoy. Trying to figure out what a Death Eater wants with a Vanishing Cabinet. Although, I’m guessing you already know.”

Draco Malfoy, wand also drawn, looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a sickly pallor to his skin that could only be attributed to stress and lack of sleep. Probably lack of proper hydration and nutrition, as well, she thought, noting the hollowness of his cheekbones and how his normally well-tailored robes hung just a little too loosely. 

“Tell me, Malfoy,” she said quietly. “How long have you been working for You-Know-Who?”

He seemed quietly enraged, although he didn’t show it outwardly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I don’t?” She quirked an eyebrow. “So the pureblood prince who once peacocked around the school with so much arrogance and disdain for those inferior to him has suddenly lost all pride in himself and his studies without cause?” She began to move slowly away from the cabinet, making sure to take very small steps so as not to disturb the obviously unstable young wizard. “”So your father, a convicted Death Eater who tried to poison the soul of a first year student on Voldemort’s behalf, hasn’t enlisted you in assisting him? You haven’t been to Borgin & Burkes in Knockturn Alley to inquire about this cabinet’s twin? You didn’t purchase a cursed necklace that injured Katie Bell in Hogsmeade just a few weeks ago?”

He was silent, staring at her in disbelief as though she were some kind of psychic. Hermione’s mouth went into a tight line and she lowered her wand, still keeping a strong grip on it.

“I had hoped Harry was wrong,” she said, disappointed. “I knew that you didn’t like people like me because of my heritage, but I had thought you had more honor than to stoop so low.”

Draco’s spine straightened impossibly. “Your heritage?” He spat. “Your filthy blood, you mean?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “Yes, my filthy blood.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, mudblood,” he sneered. “What are you doing here?”

Hermione looked at him for a moment, resolute and calm. “I’m here to help you.”

He stared at her in shock. “Help me?” He let out a barking laugh. “I don’t need help from the likes of you.”

“I know you think you don’t, but I’m here all the same. I have known you for almost seven years, Malfoy. I know your pride wouldn’t allow you to follow a half-blooded creature who was so deranged from killing and misery that he doesn’t even look human anymore unless you had to. I’m here to offer you another chance. The Order will help you. We will help your family. Keep them safe and-“

“You need to leave,” he said, quietly enough that is was almost a whisper. “You need to leave and forget that you ever saw me here, that you ever saw anything. Trust me, you don’t want to get involved here.”

“The offer stands,” she replied. “You’re not irredeemable, Malfoy. You’ve made some hard choices. We all have, and I’m sure it’s not the end of them.”

“Get out, Granger,” he spat. “I’m not a charity case for the Mudblood extraordinaire to swoop in and save. I know what I’m doing.”

Hermione left and didn’t return to the Room of Requirement again. But she watched. She watched how Malfoy hardly ate anything at all at mealtimes, how he paled whenever his huge eagle dropped a letter on his plate, how he no longer paid attention in any classes – if he even bothered to show up. 

He was deteriorating.

She didn’t even know why it broke her heart so much to watch. He had been nothing but nasty to her for the six years they had been in school together. He had laughed at her, called her horrid names, and made fun of her ignorance of the Wizarding World. She couldn’t help but feel as though something had changed over the summer. She still carried her scars from the battle in the Department of Mysteries, and although he wasn’t there, she somehow got the feeling he carried scars, as well. 

He didn’t call her names anymore. Honestly, since their third year at Hogwarts, he had hardly spoken to her. Their interaction in the Room of Hidden Things was the most she had heard him speak to her in as long as she could remember. She didn’t like him, she was certain of that. But she didn’t hate him. She could never hate someone who wasn’t truly evil.

She hoped that he would accept their protection. She knew that he wouldn’t.

She was walking down the hall on a late night patrol when she heard glass breaking and a scream in the boys’ bathroom. Disregarding her propriety, she rushed in to make sure nothing had happened. She gasped.

Harry was standing, frozen with his wand raised, about ten feet away from a screaming Draco Malfoy, who seemed to be bleeding from huge gashes that riddled his body, seemingly unable to stop forming.

“Harry,” she gasped. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t mean it,” Harry stuttered. “It was in the book. We were dueling, and-“

“Shut up,” she glared at him. “Give me your robes.”

“What?” Harry was obviously confused. Merlin! she thought, how does he manage to do anything?

“Give me your robes!” she shouted, quickly stepping over to Draco who was thankfully going into shock. She waved her wand, sending a Patronus quickly to Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape, as well as to Madame Pomfrey in the infirmary.

She cast a quick diagnostic spell that she had been practicing. Internal bleeding, lung damage, kidney damage, heart damage, intestinal damage. She ripped open Draco’s shirt to see a long gash forming dangerously close to his carotid artery and cursed. Casting a spell to slow his bleeding, she took his soaked shirt and used it apply pressure while Harry was stripping his own robes off. 

“Help me!” she told Harry, pointing at another nasty gash on Draco’s abdomen. “Apply pressure there with your robe. He’s already lost a lot of blood. I don’t know how much more he can afford to lose.”

“Hermione, I’m sorry, I-“

“Don’t apologize to me,” she snapped, moving quickly to try to make makeshift bandages where she could. “I’m not the one you nearly killed. From what I see, he’ll be lucky to live with how much damage has already been done.”

She cast another vitals diagnostic charm and cursed again. His heart rate was going down slowly. She only had the minor medical training she had gotten from Molly Weasley over the previous summer, in addition to what she read in books, but she had no idea how to stop the gashes from forming. They seemed to be everywhere. None of the suture charms she cast seemed to do anything to help, as the wound would only reopen when a new gash formed.

She heard the hurried footsteps of the professors coming down the hall. For the hundredth time, she marveled at the idiocy of not allowing Hogwarts faculty to Apparate on school grounds.

“Oh, Merlin!” McGonagall gasped.

“Out of the way, Potter,” Hermione heard Snape growl. “Idiot boy. You, too, Miss Granger.”

He muttered something under his breath, moving his hands slowly over Draco’s body. Miraculously, the gashes stopped and closed, the skin knitting together as if it had never been open in the first place. Professor Snape picked him up and rushed him out of the room to the infirmary.

“Mister Potter, Miss Granger,” Professor McGonagall whispered, obviously still unbelieving of what she saw. “I am going to need you to follow me up to the Headmaster’s office and to tell me exactly what happened here. And I mean every last detail.”

Professor Dumbledore didn’t seemed surprised at all by Harry’s story. In fact, to Hermione’s anger, he almost didn’t acknowledge Harry’s fault at all. Harry had detention for the rest of term for dueling, a minor charge considering there were only a few weeks left.

Hermione fumed as she walked beside her friend back to Gryffindor Tower. “I can’t believe you behaved so recklessly, Harry. Performing a spell in a duel that you didn’t know the outcome of is the most foolish thing you have ever done, and believe me, the list isn’t small. He could have died, Harry. Died. You can’t come back from that. That is irreversible. Are you even listening to me?” She stopped in the hallway, grabbing Harry’s arm and turning him to face her.

“He attacked me first, Mione,” he shrugged. “What was I supposed to do?”

Hermione shoved him in the chest. She had never been more angry with him that she was at his indifference. “He didn’t attack you. He lashed out verbally because you found him in a vulnerable place, and you attacked him because you don’t have any self control over your own actions. Did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s not pure evil? That maybe he is a fellow wizard who is hurting and who needs our help?”

“He’s not one of your charity cases, Hermione. He’s a Death Eater!” Harry pulled his arm out of her grasp. “He’s made his decisions.”

Hermione stared at the boy who she considered to be her best friend, amazed at him. She couldn’t even believe what she was hearing. 

“You know, Harry,” she said quietly. “He may have made his decisions in order to save himself and his family, but today you made a decision that was based purely on your ill-conceived notion of nobility and revenge. And that is what the Death Eaters do.”

She stomped away into her room in Gryffindor Tower and didn’t speak to him again that night. 

She checked on Draco in the hospital over the next few days. Madame Pomfrey seemed surprised to see her there, but allowed her to see him nonetheless. 

She was sitting in a chair by his bedside when he woke up.

He squinted at her, “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said slowly. “I wasn’t sure if you would make it.”

“Well,” his voice was raspy and dry. “I made it.”

Hermione nodded. “I can see that.”

“You tried to save me.” It wasn’t a question. More of an acknowledgment.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because no one deserves to suffer because of who their family is, regardless of the choices that they have made to protect them.” Hermione stood, smoothing out her school robes. “I told you. I want to help.”

He stared at her for a long minute. “You need to go.”

“I am,” she replied, holding the privacy curtain aside to leave. She paused, turning to look at him again. “I’m sorry, Malfoy. Really, I am.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her as she left.

She didn’t know what drove her to be in the Astronomy Tower that night. She just knew she had to be there. Borrowing Harry’s invisibility cloak, she stepped out after curfew and climbed up the rickety wooden stairs to the top room of the Tower. The night sky was clouded, and something about the air smelled wrong.  
She didn’t hear the footsteps until it was almost too late. She hid in a corner behind an old stuffed armchair, the cloak hiding her from view. She didn’t recognize everyone in the group of people in front of Dumbledore, but one platinum blonde head stood out to her.

No, she thought, pleading with whatever gods existed. Please, don’t let him do this. He won’t come back from this. No one could.

She was almost thankful that Professor Snape took the duty on instead. She had to physically cover her mouth to keep from screaming when Dumbledore fell out the window. 

“Someone’s in here,” Fenrir Greyback growled, the corners of his mouth curling upward in a cruel and sadistic smile. 

“There’s no one else here. Look around,” Malfoy said, staring directly at the corner that Hermione was in before looking away. Did he see her? Had the cloak fallen off?  
Hermione’s shock to see Harry bounding up the stairs was inexplicable. At some point during his short duel with the Death Eaters, a spell had come her way, freezing her on the spot. She had no choice but to watch as Snape disarmed Harry and fled with the other Death Eaters and Draco.

The spell lifted as she heard the door shut, and she rushed over to Harry’s side, checking him for wounds and drilling him for what really happened on his trip with Dumbledore.

“We have our orders,” Harry whispered. “I have to find the Horcruxes. I have to defeat him.”

Still reeling from Harry’s explanation, Hermione nodded. “Yes, we do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are always welcome!


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